The Short and Unhappy Marriage of King Thrym of Jotunheim
by Fialleril
Summary: The Jotun king Thrym has stolen Thor's hammer, and Thor is less than pleased with Loki's plan to get it back. Meanwhile, Sigyn learns from her mother that there is more than one way out of Asgard.


Part of my Sigyn's Saga series. This one follows "Something there is that doesn't love a wall" and "The Raven and the Milkmaid," and takes place a few months before "The Winter Flight of Birds."

Thanks to starsinyourwake for the beta.

* * *

**The Short and Unhappy Marriage of King Thrym of Jotunheim**

Sigyn is in the stables when word begins to spread that Thor's hammer is missing.

Ordinarily, she'd be the last to know, except that Loki is with her, and no one believes that his having an alibi for the last two hours amounts to anything like innocence. Thor had done quite well with his mead the night before. Mjollnir might have gone missing some while ago.

Thor is not in a mood to be understanding. At the moment, he's having quite a bit of trouble understanding Loki, who is dangling two feet above the ground on the end of Thor's arm, and making an admirable, but ultimately futile, attempt to explain through the pressure of Thor's hand around his throat.

Sigyn slaps at her half-brother's arm and stamps her foot in annoyance. "Oh, put him down," she snaps, in her best imitation of her mother's queenly tones. "You'll never learn anything if you don't let him talk."

Thor turns his glower on her. "I'm not likely to learn anything true if I do," he grumbles, but he sets Loki down all the same.

"Many thanks," Loki gasps at Sigyn, his hands rubbing the red ring around his neck. He staggers a few steps, rather overplaying the theatrics, leaning over and sucking in quick, desperate breaths. Thor watches him with the peculiar kind of fond disdain that a warrior lord holds for his bard who is quite clever with words and song, but really rather pathetic otherwise.

Loki straightens at last, and says breezily, as though he had not just been thoroughly choked, "As I was saying, Thor, I didn't steal your precious hammer. But if you would like to know who did, I'm willing to find out."

Thor considers this with an air of deep distrust. It might be warranted, Sigyn thinks, but then again Loki isn't the only one who can overplay his role.

"How?" Thor says at last, with dark suspicion.

Loki grins. "If Freyja will let me borrow her falcon coat, I can discover who _has _taken your hammer speedily enough."

Thor ponders this more deeply than is strictly necessary, but at last, grudgingly, he says, "Very well. But I am coming with you to Sessrumnir." But when he sees that this does not apparently either trouble or surprise Loki, he frowns, then adds triumphantly, "And Sigyn is coming too!"

"Am I?" Sigyn murmurs under her breath, but she doesn't really object. It will be much more interesting than learning the story after the fact.

Loki only shrugs. "If you insist," he says, and they all set off, Sigyn and Loki easily enough, and Thor scowling viciously and occasionally prodding Loki, as though he does not trust him to arrive at Freyja's hall without guidance.

Gefjon meets them at Freyja's door, looking puzzled by the strange company they make, and glancing every now and then at Sigyn in silent question. Sigyn only shrugs and mimes for Gefjon to join them in the hall.

Freyja is less pleased to see them. She is standing by the fire in her great gilded hall, but she has obviously just returned herself. She's windswept and clothed in a leather jerkin, and here and there on her white arms are spots of red, fast fading to mottled brown. She looks at the three of them as though they are tiresome servants with no sense of proper timing.

"What do you want, Loki?" she says with a sigh.

Thor's scowl deepens in affront at being ignored, but Loki shrugs broadly and leans with studied nonchalance against a pillar twined with gilded serpents.

"Thor," he says with apparent disinterest, "has had his phallus stolen."

Thor lets out a strangled roar of a sound, which Freyja entirely ignores.

"That sounds like a personal problem," she says drily, and turns back to polishing her mail coat.

Sigyn laughs at the absurdity of it, and again at Thor, who can't seem to decide which of them to glare at.

"It is no laughing matter," he snaps. "Mjollnir is missing. And that is our only sure protection against the Jotuns."

Freyja looks less than impressed, but Thor's glowering has reached deadly levels, and no one says anything. Sigyn glances at Loki, but if he had any reaction to Thor's comments about the Jotuns, he has hidden it skillfully.

"Unfortunate, certainly," Freyja says, "but I don't see what that has to do with me."

Thor begins to protest loudly and angrily, but stops himself and settles his baleful gaze firmly on Loki, who seems to be inspecting his nails.

"I thought I might borrow your falcon skin, to spy out the thief," Loki says, addressing Freyja blithely and ignoring Thor entirely. Sigyn wonders what he's playing at. There is no surer way to annoy Thor.

"Is it so hard to find yourself, then?" Freyja laughs, but she is already moving to a chest near the hearth and removing the falcon skin.

"I don't know why everyone insists on believing it was me," Loki sniffs, the very picture of affronted innocence. "Here I am, offering a good turn and help to my friend Thor in his need, and all I receive in return are doubts and accusations."

"It's all right," says Sigyn. "I believe you."

Loki turns to her, beaming with overwrought gratitude. "Well, thank you! It's nice to know someone has faith in me."

Sigyn nods seriously. "You couldn't have done it. If you had, Heimdall would know, and be out for your blood."

For a moment, Loki's expression of simpering devotion freezes in genuine surprise, and he chokes back a laugh of startled delight before recovering fully. "You wound me, Odin's daughter," he gasps, one hand clutching theatrically at his heart.

Sigyn giggles, and Freyja huffs in amusement, and even Gefjon is giggling behind her hand. But Thor looks more vexed than ever.

"This is no time for games of words," he growls. "Loki, will you seek for Mjollnir or not?"

"Yes, yes," Loki grumbles, "all right. Since you're all so suspicious, I suppose I'll have to prove my innocence. No doubt it will be terribly dangerous, and you will all feel dreadfully regretful if I fail to come back, and then you'll all say—"

Freyja tosses the falcon skin at him with a loud scoff. "Go on," she says drily. "We can hardly mourn you if you never leave."

Loki heaves a great put-upon sigh, and then with a sudden grin he tosses the falcon skin about his shoulders and wings away through the high window, toward Jotunheim.

* * *

He isn't gone long.

The falcon returns through the same window, hurtling at a reckless speed and banking, wings beating the air, into a sudden stop perched upon one of Freyja's carved golden chairs. It looks unnaturally smug for a bird.

"Well?" Thor demands, pushing forward as though he expects Loki to have the hammer grasped in his talons. "What did you find?"

In answer, the bird flaps its wings quite rudely in Thor's face. Sigyn laughs, and Thor steps back with a scowl.

The falcon takes its time, preening its feathers and shifting on its perch, large slow-blinking eyes watching them all as though they were strange and fascinating curiosities, or perhaps dinner. Finally it shrugs its shoulders in an odd twisting motion, and then the falcon is Loki, lounging easily in the chair, with a cloak of feathers pooling at his feet.

"Well?" Thor says again, with even less patience.

"The Jotun king Thrym has stolen your symbol of manliness," Loki says, with an odd shrug much like the falcon's. "Incidentally, he says it's much shorter than he expected."

Thor growls and steps forward threateningly, and Loki throws up his hands in the universal sign of surrender. But he's grinning still.

"King Thrym also says that he's buried your hammer eight miles below the earth, and will only return it if he has Freyja as a bride." Loki sounds much more somber now, but under his breath he mutters, "Of course." Freyja's hand in marriage is not exactly an uncommon request.

Thor straightens with new purpose and fire in his eyes and turns sharply to fix Freyja with a gaze that allows for no argument.

"Get your bridal veil," he says.

Freyja has been sharpening a long, leaf-shaped sword with steady, rhythmic sounds. She looks up now from her work, but her hand continues to draw the whetstone, slowly and with terrible deliberation, down the length of the blade. The scrape of iron on stone echoes in the silence of the hall.

She takes her time, never speaking, and at last the sword is sharpened to her satisfaction. She sheaths it, slowly, her deadly gaze never leaving Thor's.

"No," she says at last. "I don't think I will."

Thor growls, and for a moment Sigyn is afraid that things may get very ugly indeed. But Loki interrupts them with a profound and long-suffering sigh.

"There's a very simple answer to this dilemma, you know," he says.

Both Freyja and Thor turn to glare at him.

"Yes," says Thor shortly. "But Freyja will not see reason."

It's then, at the most inopportune moment, that Sigyn laughs. Thor looks so genuinely exasperated, while Freyja's look alone could do murder, and the whole situation is absurd.

Her laugh rings through the quiet, and now all eyes are on her: Freyja and Thor fuming quietly, Gefjon looking rather nervous, and Loki with his mouth twisted in a wicked grin.

It's the last, probably, that makes Sigyn reckless enough to say, "Well, Thor, it's your hammer. You can't expect Freyja to give up her place for it while you do nothing. If you want it maybe you should get it yourself."

With a sharp gasp of mirth, Gefjon loses her nerves in laughter, and Freyja too is snickering and looking quite pleased. But Loki, to Sigyn's surprise, doesn't laugh. His smile remains, but it turns decidedly crafty.

"Actually," he says slowly, "that's not a bad idea."

They all stare at him.

Now Loki does laugh. "Don't look so scandalized!" he says. "I have a plan."

Thor's glower does not improve. "That is hardly comforting," he says darkly.

"Oh, no," says Loki with undisguised glee. "This will be fun." He eyes Thor up and down, with a distinctly suggestive smirk, and for a moment Thor's ire fades into a shocking show of unease. Sigyn watches them both curiously. Certainly Loki is up to something, but Thor is hardly known for being apprehensive about anything.

"Yes," says Loki at last, with a satisfied nod, "I think we can work with this. You will make a lovely bride, Thor."

Thor gapes at him in astonished silence. Even Freyja's laughter is delayed by her surprise.

"Of course," Loki continues blithely, "the beard will have to go."

And with that Thor's shock is broken by a roar of rage as he lunges for Loki.

"Oh, don't worry!" Loki says, ducking nimbly away and racing for the door with a parting laugh. "If all else fails, I'm sure I can get the dwarves to make you a new one of red-gold!"

"And where are you going?" Freyja calls after him, more amused than angry.

"To prepare," Loki calls back, already out the door. "Someone must go with Thor as a bride's maid, after all!" And then he's well and truly gone, and Thor is left glaring without much hope around the hall as the three women, laughing, ponder the best way to turn him into a bride.

* * *

Sigyn doesn't think she's ever seen Thor without his beard before. He's much older than her, but clean-shaven he looks oddly young and decidedly shamefaced. And angry, of course. Definitely angry.

The anger is mostly directed at Loki, who, unfortunately, hasn't returned yet, so really Thor's anger is just turned loose on the crowd. And it's certainly a crowd. They've gathered to witness, and jeer at, the great Thor dressed in the full panoply of a bride, which is something no one has ever seen before.

Sigyn and Gefjon have done their best. Sif had offered her aid, as well, but this only seemed to deepen Thor's shame, and so she has spent more time in reassuring her husband than in actively preparing his bridal. Freyja, who has hardly stopped snickering since Loki left, has been little help, though she did graciously lend some of her clothes, and, of course, the necklace Brisingamen. It shines now on Thor's painfully improvised bosom, looking shockingly dainty.

The absence of the beard helps, in the same way that adding salt to rancid meat helps. Sigyn looks over her brother with a sigh of despair.

"We're definitely going to have to use a veil," she says to Gefjon, who laughs.

"Do you really think it's likely to improve anything?" she says.

There's absolutely no good answer to that. Sigyn groans.

Freyja's dress, even charmed to him, stretches awkwardly over Thor's back and shoulders, and bunches in all the wrong places. And they haven't had any luck with the breasts. In the end they'd been forced to use two goats' bladders filled with water, and they hang awkwardly and unevenly on his chest. The dress doesn't fit right over them, either. In spite of herself, Sigyn giggles. If they pull this off at all, Thor is going to look far more like a rumpled and rather dumpy middle-aged farm wife than the beautiful Freyja.

"This is humiliating," says Thor. The assembled gods break into a fresh round of guffaws, and he glowers at them all with dark promise. It seems to be much less effective from a thunder god in a dress.

Only Sif makes any effort to comfort him, but the way she pats his shoulder is awkward at best, and Sigyn can see that she, too, is fighting a smile.

Thrud is away with the Valkyries on Midgard, which is incredibly unfortunate. Sigyn knows she'll be retelling this story for her friend for years to come.

"Everyone will think me womanish," Thor grumbles, mostly to himself. "It's not to be borne."

Sigyn frowns. It is a dreadful insult, certainly, and especially hard for a man like Thor. Even so, she feels herself suddenly much less sympathetic to her brother.

"Well, certainly not like that!" a cheerful new voice calls from the threshold. "You don't look like you've even tried, Thor. Anyone would think you didn't want your stolen phallus back at all."

"Loki!" Thor growls, towering up in a sudden rage, his skirts billowing clumsily about his massive legs.

"And only just in time, too," Loki laughs brightly, but no one is really paying attention. All of the assembled Aesir are too caught up in staring at him.

Sigyn is quite unashamedly staring herself. She'd assumed, when Loki said that he intended to accompany Thor to Jotunheim as his lady's maid, that Loki would simply change his shape into that of a woman. She knows he can, and that he's done it often enough. But, she realizes with some surprise now, she's not actually sure if anyone else knows that. She scrambles to recall any time that Loki might have been openly a woman among the Aesir, but can't seem to muster many thoughts at all in the face of the Loki who is standing here now, all wicked grin and tightly braided hair and a simple servant's dress that nevertheless fits far better than Thor's fine gown.

He hasn't changed his shape. He's put his hair up in a proper demure maiden's style, and he's wearing the dress and simple shoes of a serving woman, and _his _breasts don't look at all awkward or lumpy. Sigyn wonders, in some distant part of her mind, if he used goats' bladders too, or if there's some secret she and Gefjon didn't think of.

There's a moment of blank silence, and then someone, probably Tyr, Sigyn thinks, starts to laugh, and all the other Aesir join in with a rush. But it's not the same kind of laughter that Thor received. It's meant to sound the same, but Sigyn hears a note of discomfort to it that wasn't there for Thor. Loki looks, well— She swallows hard and turns away, feeling unexpectedly flustered.

Heimdall, though, seems actually angry. "We should have expected Loki to play the woman," he sneers, and Sigyn is surprised at the venom in his voice. She wonders if he's realized who that Jotun woman at the feast nearly three years ago really was.

Loki grins at him. He moves across the wide space of Freyja's hall with purpose, and most of the Aesir step well back from him, but their eyes follow him.

Loki laughs easily, crowding close to Heimdall and murmuring, in a whisper pitched to carry throughout the hall, "Oh, Heimdall, for you I'll play the woman any time." He winks, and there's a burst of laughter from the gathered Aesir, but Heimdall's face is fast purpling with wrath.

"You have no shame, Jotun's kin," he hisses in disgust.

But Loki only laughs again. "Thank you," he says, with the pretty blush and shy downturned gaze of a maiden who has been complimented.

Before Heimdall can respond any further, though it's clear he wants to, Thor cuts in with a loud huff of irritation.

"Yes, yes, we both look ridiculous," he grumbles. "Now let us go retrieve Mjollnir and put an end to this farce."

"No so fast, Thor," Loki says brightly, seeming to forget all about Heimdall, who looks, if possible, even more angry. "_You_ look ridiculous, certainly, and we can't have that." He turns to the assembled Aesir and winks at the lot of them. "It's a terrible thing when a maid so thoroughly outshines the bride," he sighs dramatically.

Freyja snorts. "Maybe you ought to go in my stead then, Loki," she says drily.

"Oh no," Loki says blithely, "it's not my phallus that's been stolen."

Thor fairly explodes at that, and between Loki's words and the flurry of ill-fitting skirts and perfectly braided hair that is Thor, the gathered gods are howling with laughter all over again.

"Is that why he makes such a lovely bride?" Freyr chortles, and the rest join in, until Thor looks ready to take out his anger on the whole crowd of them. Sigyn, who isn't laughing, thinks it's lucky Thor doesn't have his hammer after all.

"You would all do well not to laugh," he shouts, which only prompts more laughter. But Thor has never found it difficult to be heard. "Mjollnir has been stolen," he growls, "and who will defend your halls against the wild mountain giants if it is not returned?"

This silences them.

Sigyn watches each face carefully. Most of the Aesir look ashamed, and Tyr and Freyr even mumble half-formed apologies. Sif's eyes, watching her husband, are gentle and warm. Freyja, though, looks more amused than ever, and Heimdall, to Sigyn's surprise, is still watching Loki, disgust and something else less easily named painting his face with harsh lines. Thor looks distinctly satisfied, now that the proper order of things has been (at least somewhat) restored, and the look is so at odds with the figure of her brother, clean-shaven and in a dress, that Sigyn herself does laugh now, though she keeps it quiet. But then her gaze moves to Loki, and she sees the smile frozen on his face and twisted into something unfamiliar, both dark and sad, and her own small laughter fades away entirely.

Loki sighs deeply. "It's all right, Thor," he says, sounding almost weary. "We'll get your hammer back."

And then the weariness disappears so quickly Sigyn begins to wonder if it was ever really there, and Loki is grinning again.

"But we can't go anywhere," he laughs, "until you are properly ready for your bridal. The great lady Freyja would never set out to marriage looking so…lumpy."

Sigyn lets out a startled giggle. "We couldn't get the bladders to look right," she says with a wry shrug.

"Just that, then?" Loki teases, and Sigyn grins and shrugs again.

"Come here, Thor," Loki says merrily. "Let's see if we can't make you look the part."

Thor stomps toward him with poor grace, and Sigyn hears Gefjon snicker. She can't imagine anyone looking less like Freyja that Thor does now.

"It's not hopeless," says Loki in a warm, comforting tone. He prowls around Thor, examining him from all angles, pursing his lips and occasionally nodding to himself. "Hmm. Yes. All right. I can work with this."

Then, in an astonishing flurry of movement, he reaches out first to adjust the bladders on Thor's chest, shifting them to hang evenly and molding and shaping them with his hands until the lumps have dissolved and they look surprisingly natural beneath Freyja's charmed dress. Sigyn blinks, not entirely sure how he's managed it.

But Loki seems entirely caught up in his own world, humming tunelessly under his breath as he brushes his hands over Thor's dress, reshaping the fabric with charms and simple motion, adjusting the way Freyja's necklace hangs against Thor's breasts and even making minute changes to his neatly braided hair.

At last he steps back, makes another circuit around Thor, and nods once. It's a fairly resigned nod, but amused too.

"Well," Loki says, with a smile for Sigyn, "you work with what you have. But I think we will need that veil."

Thor _does _look much better than he had under her ministrations, but, Sigyn admits to herself with a smile, he will never pass for a great beauty.

"Maybe several veils," she murmurs doubtfully.

"Yes," Sif says, with a slight smile. "Thor has a rather distinctive face, even without the beard."

Thor himself, who is hardly used to being talked about as though he isn't there, looks caught between annoyance and pleasure at their assessment of him, but he beams at his wife's words.

"I will have the veil," he booms. "The less I am seen like this, the better." And he snatches the veil almost violently from Gefjon's hands and deposits it haphazardly on his head, where it slides down his massive skull to hang precariously from his broad forehead. The assembled Aesir, apparently having forgotten Thor's earlier scolding, begin laughing loudly once more.

"There," Thor says gruffly. "Now, come, Loki. We have wasted enough time. Let us retrieve Mjollnir and be done with this."

Loki sighs dramatically and reaches up to adjust Thor's veil so that it crowns his head properly. He steps back momentarily, winces, and quickly adds a second veil.

Sigyn hears Thor's muffled growl of annoyance from beneath the veils, but she cannot see anything of his expression, which counts as a success.

"Can you even see, Thor?" she laughs, looking up at his enormous frame swathed in gauzy linen and jewels.

"Of course!" says Thor, muffled but indignant, and immediately he takes a blundering step forward and crashes into one of Freyja's carven chairs.

Freyja herself snickers loudly. "You have all my sympathy, Thor," she says in a honey-sweet tone full of the promise of dreadful things. "It's simply awful, being a woman."

"But there are rewards," says Loki glibly, with a saucy wink for Heimdall's benefit. The guardian's knuckles are bone white in his clenched fists, and he looks murderous, but, Sigyn notices, Freyja is laughing, and Thor has ripped off his veils in disgust and is staring at Loki in horrified amusement. For the moment they have forgotten about each other and their anger, and both are content to laugh at Loki.

_Clever_, Sigyn thinks, and wonders if anyone else has even noticed. Now that she has, she thinks that this is something Loki does regularly, turning aside anger with jokes at his own expense.

Well, she can play along.

"We'll have to go with only one veil then," Sigyn says with a smile. "And you mustn't forget your keys, Thor." She snatches a set of housewife's keys from Sif and jingles them at Thor, laughing again at his suspicious scowl.

Thor grumbles, but takes the keys and fastens them artlessly to the belt at his waist. Loki rolls his eyes in despair, but doesn't make any effort to adjust Thor's appearance this time, and Thor, looking strangely accomplished, grabs him by the arm and drags him through the ranks of the laughing Aesir and out the door of Freyja's hall.

Sigyn follows them, still giggling herself, and most of the Aesir trail out after her, not yet willing to let their entertainment go.

In the yard, Thor is raging and growling at his goats, who shy away from his movements and snort and bare their teeth. They don't seem to recognize their master in his skirts and veils and perfumed hair, and Thor's patience has long ago worn thin. Sif is with him, trying to calm the goats and her husband in turn.

Loki ignores them, slipping away from the laughing crowd and drawing close to Sigyn. She greets him with a smile, but shifts a bit self-consciously when he grins wickedly and steps even closer.

"Well," he says, voice pitched low and quite near her ear, "what do you think?"

Sigyn swallows. She can feel the blood rising in her cheeks.

"About Thor?" she mumbles. "I think he'll do, if this Thrym is both near-sighted and has a very different standard of beauty."

Loki laughs, delighted and maybe even a little impressed. He draws back from her, which is a relief Sigyn tries not to think about. Until he tilts his head, bird-like, and gives her a teasing grin. Then she knows she's in trouble.

"And me?" he says, with a twist of his lips. "Will I do?"

She can feel her blush deepening, but she's learned how to deal with Loki. Denial is pointless, but sometimes, if she's lucky, she can still surprise him with audacity.

So she grins, ignoring her burning cheeks, and forces herself to look him in the eye. "You look lovely," she says.

She's glad she's looking, or she might have missed the momentary but certainly present flash of surprise in his eyes, before his grin softens to something less teasing that makes her stomach tighten and her breath catch, just a little. She swallows and looks away.

"And you know that," she mumbles, still looking at the ground.

But Loki only says, "Thank you," without any trace of irony or teasing, and that's enough of a surprise that she looks up again.

He winks at her.

She blushes again, and glowers at him. Distantly, she's aware of the sounds of Thor still shouting at his goats, and the laughter of the other Aesir.

"Are you ever going to tell him that Freyja travels with cats, not goats?" she grumbles, still glaring.

Loki shrugs. "No," he says, considering. "No, I don't think I will. This is much more fun."

Sigyn sighs.

"What will you do?" she asks, catching his gaze and softening her glare. "When he gets his hammer back? You know how it's going to end."

"Yes," Loki breathes, all trace of laughter gone from his face. "I know."

She thinks of Thor's warnings about the wild mountain giants. For all of Loki's jokes about Thor's stolen phallus, they both know what the hammer is really for.

"Do you know them?" she whispers, almost afraid to admit even to herself the thoughts that fill her mind. "Thrym, I mean, or any of his people?"

Loki watches her carefully. There's an odd smile on his face, and she's reminded of their talk about the wall. He seems both present and terribly distant.

"Yes," he says at last, but he doesn't offer anything further, and Sigyn doesn't ask. They stand silently watching as Thor finally manages to tame his goats and, apparently, convince them of his identity. Sigyn watches Loki's face, the fond amusement that nearly hides the weariness and resignation, and she sees the force behind his smile.

"Wish me luck?" he quips, with a waggle of his eyebrows that is almost perfectly believable. Almost.

Sigyn bites her lip, then tries for a smile of her own.

"All right," she murmurs, "but you have to promise me the story when you return. Your story, not Thor's."

"Just that?" Loki breathes, and his smile tilts, sly and far more genuine.

"Yes," Sigyn says, and leaning into the little space between them, she leaves a kiss on his perfectly painted mouth.

"Loki!" Thor bellows from the yard, and Sigyn jumps back, flustered, but Loki only grins.

"Are you ready at last?" he calls carelessly over his shoulder, but his eyes don't leave hers. "A story, then," he whispers, for her ears only, and he winks again before turning away to meet Thor.

In spite of herself, Sigyn laughs, watching the two of them climb into Thor's chariot. Thor takes the reins with little patience, pointedly ignoring the assembled Aesir and grumbling at his uncooperative goats.

Heimdall, still staring suspiciously after Loki, opens the great gate for them, and Thor lashes his goats into a near frenzy, eager to be gone.

"Calm down, Thor, or you'll ruin your veil," she hears Loki chide, followed by an exclamation of disdain from Thor, and then they are gone.

* * *

Sigyn spends the day with her mother, in the mist-shrouded hall of looms, though she's not very focused on the work of weaving. Frigg notices, of course, but she only smiles fondly. Most of the other women are still laughing about the figure Thor cut in a dress, though Sigyn can see that there's nervousness there, too; no one wants to think of what might happen to Asgard without Thor's hammer to protect them.

Sigyn herself isn't especially worried, though. Loki is more than clever enough to handle a court full of giants, and Sigyn has always known Thor to be unstoppable. She can't imagine anyone standing against him.

But she is restless. She imagines the stronghold of the giants, the fierce bulk of Thrym, the multitude of Jotuns gathered to meet Thor and Loki. She laughs softly to herself, imagining Thor's huge booming voice emerging from beneath his veil, and the giants cowering back in surprise and fear. Except, no. That would never work. Instead she imagines Loki must be doing all the talking, and trying his best to keep Thor silent and demure. She can almost hear the increasingly absurd excuses he must be making for Thor's behavior.

Her thoughts are with anything but her work. The spindle drops through her heedless fingers and rolls, trailing spun flax across the floor, and Sigyn jumps, startled by the noise.

"You are very far away, daughter," her mother laughs gently, and Sigyn flushes with guilt.

"Sorry," she mumbles.

Frigg pats the bench beside her invitingly, and Sigyn sighs and moves closer to her mother, leaving the unraveled linen spread over the floor. Her mother's silence is warm and soothing.

"Do you ever want to leave Asgard, Mother?" Sigyn whispers. Her words drift softly in the air, a terrible secret, and she glances furtively around the hall, but no one else seems to be listening. Fulla is retelling the story of Thor's bridal with expressive hand motions and plenty of laughter, and all the other women are focused on her tale. Sigyn releases a breath and turns back to her mother, who is watching her with a quiet tenderness and the promise of her silence.

Sigyn wonders, sometimes, about the secrets her mother holds, but she knows Frigg will never speak them.

She shifts closer, resting her head against her mother's shoulder and closing her eyes. All her feeling of restless curiosity and terrible longing emerges in a soft sigh.

"Where would you go?" Frigg breathes into her hair.

Sigyn laughs, a soft puff of air. "I don't know," she admits. "Anywhere."

She feels her mother nod. "But right now, I think, you would go to Thrym's hall in Jotunheim," Frigg says, and it's not a question.

Sigyn shrugs. "Maybe," she says.

She feels her mother's shoulder shift with movement, and opens her eyes again to see Frigg set aside her spinning, a rare thing indeed.

"There are many ways out of Asgard," Frigg says, all soft smiles and mystery, and Sigyn stares at her. "Would you see?" her mother whispers.

"Yes!" Sigyn whispers fiercely, and when Frigg rises, Sigyn follows her so quickly that she trips over the spun linen still lying near her feet. But she only giggles breathlessly, righting herself with graceless motions of her arms through the thick air, and hurries after her mother through the hall and out, into the fenland that surrounds them. The other women watch them go, but no one questions Frigg.

Sigyn had wondered, for one astonished moment, if her mother might take her to sit upon Hlidskjalf, but instead she follows Frigg in silence out into the marsh. Drifts of mist flow around them and quickly swallow up the world behind them, until she can no longer guess at Fensalir, though she knows it must lie only a few hundred feet away. Frigg is humming softly ahead of her, wordless sounds that cleave the fog like curtains, allowing them to pass, before the mist falls silently closed behind.

Frigg is as famed for her sight as for her silence. Sigyn has heard it said, in the mead halls and in the casual talk of Asgard, that Frigg sees all, although she tells nothing, and Sigyn could well believe it. She has helped her mother with the weaving often enough to know the power even of Frigg's most mundane actions.

Her mother stops before a pool, to Sigyn's eyes no different than any other of the marsh-pools that surround them. The water is dark and cloudy, surrounded on all sides by thick clumps of purple iris and shivering reeds, and countless birds are chirping there.

But at a certain point on the bank, only just wide enough for two to stand abreast, there is a clear place leading into deep water. Frigg leads her there, and they stand looking down into the water, shrouded in mist and robed with the sweet smell of flag iris. Somewhere close by, Sigyn hears the croak of a frog, muted in the heavy air.

"Watch, daughter," Frigg says with a conspiratorial smile, and she bends down to trace runes in the mud of the bank. The water ripples once, then is still.

Nothing happens in the world around them. Sigyn had thought, maybe, that an image would appear in the water, or perhaps some messenger would come to them with news, but everything is fog-bound and silent.

The sight that comes, at last, is not in the world, but in her mind. Sigyn gives a startled gasp and lurches forward as the ground seems to fall away beneath her, and she is flying. Dimly, she's aware of her mother's arm, catching her above the water, but mostly she feels herself borne through the air on wings that are not her own, passing with terrible speed over mountains and rivers and vast forests, until she catches site of a great stronghold, far off still but fast rushing to meet her.

"That is the home of Thrym, a king in Jotunheim," her mother's voice whispers within her thoughts. She looks to the side, and spies a great heron flying there, strong wings beating the air with steady strokes.

"Mother," Sigyn breathes in wonder, and tries to catch a glimpse of herself. But all she can see, looking down, is a dimly guessed form of feathers and the swift passing of the land below. And then, quite suddenly, the looming wall of Thrym's stronghold, rearing up before her as she raises her head.

"Come," her mother says, and they fly easily over the walls before diving steeply into the hall.

Sigyn glances about in mingled awe and fear, for the hall revealed around them is massive and richly decorated, far more so than she would have expected for a stronghold of mountain giants. But then Thrym is accounted a king. His hall must be far finer than most, though it is still hardly comparable to any of the great halls in Asgard.

The hall is filled with people of every shape and size imaginable. Most of them are no taller than the Aesir, though they are darker of face, and raucous in their merriment. And yet, she's reminded of nothing so much as the sights and sounds of feasting in Gladsheim. Nervously she glances over at her mother, but the heron is perched serenely on a beam of the roof, looking quite at home. Sigyn herself is settled beside her, though she feels herself much smaller than her mother. But slowly her fear that they will be noticed fades. The giants do not often look up, but even those few who have don't seem to notice the two birds perched in the rafters.

At the head of the hall, in the high seat, is a Jotun who must be Thrym. Sigyn had been expecting some terrible, misshapen form, but his appearance is wholly unremarkable. Beside him in the seat of honor is Thor, still swathed in bridal gear, and beside him Loki, who is laughing and chatting easily with the Jotuns on either side of the table.

Thor, however, seems to be soothing his nerves with enormous quantities of food. Sigyn knows that her brother is a man of impressive appetite, but even she is awed as she watches him swiftly put away a whole ox and eight entire salmon. She is not the only one surprised; there's evident murmuring from the high table, and Thrym himself looks puzzled.

Loki opens his mouth, and everything in his body language indicates ease as he speaks, but Sigyn is too far away to hear. She glances aside at her mother, who nods her long feathered neck graciously, though even in this form, Sigyn can see the amusement in her eyes. But she shrugs it off, and together they fly closer, wing-beats filling the hall, though still none of the giants notice.

Sigyn knows what this is, though she has never before practiced shape-changingherself. It is very different from the way that Loki's shape changes. She knows (and if she concentrates, can even feel) that her own body is back away in the marsh-land behind Fensalir, crouched in a bed of sweet-smelling iris above a dark pool of still water. But her spirit is flying about in the body of some bird, though she cannot guess what kind. It is a form of _seid _that her father is expert at, but Sigyn never knew her mother possessed the skill.

It shouldn't surprise her. Frigg is party to all of her husband's knowledge.

They are close enough now for her to catch Loki's words. He is laughing, a high, rich, ringing sound, as he explains that great Freyja was so eager for her wedding night, she has neglected to eat anything for the past eight days.

The Jotuns who sit at the high table laugh loudly at this pronouncement, and Thrym looks smugly pleased. He preens as he looks at his bride, and many of the giants are leering, though, Sigyn notices with amusement, more appreciative glances are cast at Loki than at Thor.

Thor himself is evidently enraged, and having eaten his fill already he now seems to be trying to drown his disgust in mead. His ire only deepens as Loki is forced to tell a similarly ridiculous tale to explain the bride's drinking prowess.

Sigyn hears her mother's amused sigh in her mind. "He brings it on himself," Frigg murmurs. "And he's lucky your friend is here to offer explanation, absurd as it is."

Sigyn feels a flush fill her face, though of course it doesn't show on a bird's body. She has never really talked with her mother about Loki, and that is only partly because she isn't entirely certain what she would say, or what she should feel. But her mother has always been one to see what is unspoken, and, she realizes now, she may have missed some good advice in her effort to save herself embarrassment. Loki would say it is a fault she shares with her father.

"Do you think me wrong, to befriend him?" Sigyn whispers in the stillness of her heart, steeling all her courage. Below, Loki is explaining the brightness of Thor's burning eyes in the most ribald way possible.

She feels her mother's gentle smile as Frigg's voice within her heart replies, "Do you think yourself wrong?"

Always her mother turns questions on their asker. This time, Sigyn finds herself more fond than annoyed.

"No," she admits, and waits, as below Thrym bellows for Mjollnir to be brought to hallow the bride, and Loki flirts outrageously with an admittedly handsome young Jotun seated across the table from him.

"You have always been eager for tales, daughter," Frigg says at last, her voice slow and considering. "It's no surprise to me, that you should befriend such a teller of stories." And then, to her own surprise, Sigyn feels her mother's smile as Frigg adds, teasingly, "Nor is it any surprise that he should befriend you."

Sigyn blinks. She herself has always thought it very surprising, indeed.

Frigg gestures with one long, graceful sweep of her heron's wing out over the crowded hall, where Thrym waits impatiently as Mjollnir is brought to the high table, and Thor twitches with eagerness for the fight. Sigyn has a sudden premonition of how it will end, and for the first time wishes herself back in Asgard, working at weaving in her mother's hall and untroubled by the understanding of Thor's enmity with the giants. She glances again at Loki, who looks easy and careless still, and wonders how he bears it.

"You see what others do not," Frigg whispers, and for once Sigyn does not have to ask what she means.

"I must take after you, then," she says, and tries for a laugh, but she sounds more uneasy than anything.

"I have always liked to think so," Frigg says, gently, and draws Sigyn's smaller feathered form under her wing. Below, a servant has brought Mjollnir to the bride, and Thor is standing to receive it with burning eyes.

"Come," says Frigg, her voice distant and almost sad. "It is time that we were gone." And she rises from the rafters with a great beating of wings, flitting swiftly through the hall and out again into the wide rocky world. Sigyn follows after her without any real intention, drawn by the power of her mother's magic, but even as she leaves, she catches the unmistakable sounds of shouting and fear, and the dull fall of a great hammer blow against soft flesh.

She says nothing during the swift flight back. The towering mountains and ancient forests and the great rushing torrents seem stranger and more wild as they pass over, yet Sigyn pays them little heed. Her mind is all filled with the knowledge of what must happen now, back in Thrym's hall.

She is not aware of them landing. She has no sensation of herself leaving the bird's body, or coming back to herself. She simply opens her eyes, and she is still crouching there in the rushes and the sweet purple irises, the dark pool at her feet reflecting dimly beneath passing clouds of mist.

She does not ask about the fate of the giants, and Frigg does not offer anything. Sigyn is like her mother in this, too: she knows when to hold her silence.

"If you wish it," Frigg says, a hushed secret, "I will teach you this way of traveling."

Sigyn shivers once, considering. She has seen perhaps more than she wished, and yet, it would be no less true had she not seen it.

"Yes," she says at last, and her mother smiles.

* * *

It is more than a full day before Loki and Thor return. When they do, Sigyn is a little disappointed to see they are no longer dressed as women.

Thor is exultant in his victory, and keen to make everyone forget his brief stint as a bride. At the feasting that night, his tale makes little of the means of his arrival at Thrym's hall, and much of the deeds of strength he did, and the power of the Jotuns he killed. There's general celebration, and many toasts drunk, to Thor and Mjollnir both.

Loki waits until Thor has told his story several times over before offering his own version. Where Thor's tale was one of great heroism and mighty deeds, Loki's can only be described as a farce. He gleefully describes Thor's unbridled appetites at the Jotun feast, and the increasingly absurd explanations he had given for Thor's behavior. Thor scowls, but makes no effort to silence Loki, and the assembled Aesir laugh at his antics well into the night. Even Freyja, who Sigyn thinks might have had cause to take offense, seems more amused than anything.

"And Thrym was so very eager to kiss his bride, who had been so ardently longing for him," Loki proclaims grandly, drawing out the word _ardently _to nearly obscene lengths, "that he could not restrain himself at all, and raised her veil right there in the midst of the feast!" He pauses for effect, and the assembled gods, who have already heard Loki's story once, nevertheless lean forward over the mead benches, eager themselves for the tale.

Loki grins around at all of them, and lowers his voice scandalously to say, "And what should he see, but two beady, red, burning eyes! He jumped back in surprise and dismay, and, I think, more than a little…excitement." He winks at Heimdall, seated near, and both Heimdall and Thor growl in disgust. But Loki only laughs.

"Jotun women are known for their fierceness, you know," he says sagely. "No doubt they were not expecting as much from lovely Freyja. I think old Thrym was pleasantly surprised."

"Hmph," says Thor. "That is not how I remember it."

"Oh, hush Thor," Loki says, with a careless wave of his hand. "You were hardly paying attention to anything, except to count the number of Jotun heads you might crack when Mjollnir was restored to you."

"That is true," says Thor, mollified, and lets the tale continue, without change.

Sigyn herself recalls that Thrym had looked more dismayed than anything, when he beheld Thor's terrible eyes beneath the veil. But already she can see the picture in her mind changing as Loki weaves his words.

"And so I told him that the fair Freyja had been so eager for her wedding night, she had stayed awake the eight nights previous, working very interesting spells indeed." Here again Loki winks, this time at Freyja herself, who, to Sigyn's great surprise, meets him with a wink of her own and laughs aloud. Heimdall's glower, which has been a constant feature of his face these past few days, actually deepens, though Sigyn isn't sure why.

"Thrym was so enchanted by this knowledge," Loki continues gleefully, "that he called for Mjollnir to be brought immediately, so that he could be married without delay, and bedded all the faster."

The room roars with laughter, but Sigyn sees the amusement in Loki's glinting eyes turn to something sly, and as the laughter dies down, he adds, with pointed innocence, "Indeed I think no few men in this hall would do the same, were fair Freyja so eager to bed them." His easy smile cuts the sudden silence like a well-thrown blade. Several of the Aesir shift restlessly on the bench, and dark scowls spread across their faces. Freyja herself is perfectly still, but Sigyn thinks there is something smug and even vicious in her eyes, and she does not think it is directed at Loki. The grumbling grows around them, but Freyja and Loki both seem untouched by it.

Loki only shrugs broadly and stands with fluid grace from the bench. "And that is the tale," he says with a flourish, as though unaware that his audience is far from pleased with him. "Thor has told you already how it went after that, and I will not challenge his skill in the telling of tales. I am promised a meeting later tonight, so I'll leave you to drink the health of the lovely bride." He grins at Thor, tipping his horn in mocking respect, then downs the last of his mead and waves a jaunty farewell to the hall at large.

Someone further down the bench calls out, "Perhaps Loki has a Jotun man to meet with tonight, then," and there's a ripple of laughter, and a few jeers mixed in.

But Loki only turns at the door and laughs. "Perhaps I do," he says, waggling his eyebrows, and then with a last laugh he slips out into the dark.

Sigyn stays a little longer, offering horns of mead and listening to the discontented murmurings about Loki. They continue until Thor says, in reply to some question, but more than loud enough for the whole hall to hear, "Well, I do not make a very good woman! I don't think my ruse would have been successful at all, but for Loki's cleverness."

Then the murmuring dies down, and there's momentary silence, before someone asks for Thor's tale again, and he launches into a further expanded account of his deeds with Mjollnir in Jotunheim. And there is no more talk of Loki that night.

Sigyn slips away then, and no one notices her departure. She takes her time, walking in the misty dark, enjoying the coolness of the night air and the silence broken by occasional laughter and shouts from the mead hall. She wanders idly, her feet guiding her thoughtlessly toward the grove of ash south of Fensalir. The night is bright with stars, glimmering like distant gems caught in a net of branches and shivering leaves.

"Hello, Sigyn," Loki says, and she turns to find him a few feet away, lying stretched out in the grass and looking up at the sky, careless as a child. She's honestly surprised to see him still in his usual shape.

"Am I your Jotun man, then?" she asks, dropping gracelessly to the ground and falling back to watch the sky herself.

"Would you like to be?" Loki asks lazily, left hand raised to trace invisible patterns in the stars.

Sigyn considers this. "Maybe," she says at last. "At least, if you promised your Jotun man a story."

Loki laughs. "I gave you a story earlier, didn't I? Or did you not like that one?"

"I liked it well enough," she says. "But it wasn't what you promised me. It was a farce, yes, and very funny, but Thor's story, still."

She can feel him watching her, in the dark, but she keeps her eyes on the stars, though she fears her smile gives her away.

"Hmm," Loki says, slowly. "And what story would you prefer, then?"

"Yours, as you promised." On a whim, she plucks several blades of grass and flicks them at him. One lands on the very tip of his nose, and he laughs, but doesn't bother to brush it off.

"Why should you need my story, though, when you saw it all for yourself?"

Sigyn blinks. "What?" she blurts out, and her voice sounds strange to her own ears.

It isn't that she wanted to keep her travelling a secret, though in honesty she hasn't decided yet if she wants anyone to know or not. But she can't imagine how he could know, and it's unnerving. She'd rather been looking forward to some independent knowledge of one of his tales, for once.

Loki shrugs broadly in the grass, unsettling the blade from his nose. With a little puff of his breath, it blows away into the night.

"I saw two birds perched in the rafters above Thrym's hall," he says softly, in what she's come to think of as his storyteller's voice. "A great regal grey heron, and a little bunting, speckled white and brown like the first snowmelt of spring. A strange pair of birds, you might think, but they seemed familiar with one another." He grins at her, quick and artless. "I'm not very familiar with the ways of herons," he says, and Sigyn laughs in spite of herself, because she can't believe that's true. "But," Loki says easily, paying no heed to her laughter, "I like to think I know something about buntings. Very curious birds. Quite clever, too."

"Flatterer," she says, and Loki grins shamelessly.

"One shape-changer is easily spotted by another," he says, "so long as your eyes are open."

Sigyn still has difficulty thinking of herself as a shape-changer, but she supposes his description must be accurate, and she's struck silent by the thought. She knows that her father is a master of shape-changing magic, and that Freyja is as well. And Loki is _the _shape-changer, in a way wholly different from anyone else, a way that she can't put into words. She feels strangely uncomfortable with the thought of including herself in that number.

But she has always loved to watch the sky. She lies back in the grass now, feeling the breeze over her face, and remembers the rush of wind beneath and over and through wings not her own, and the weightless motion of flying.

"You certainly seem pleased with yourself," Loki chuckles.

Sigyn shrugs easily. "I didn't say I don't enjoy your flattery," she says with a soft smirk.

Loki laughs again, and they pass into an easy silence. Far above, the stars drift in their slow dance through the dark, and the night deepens toward the blackest hour before dawn. Dew settles in the grass and damps Sigyn's dress, but she doesn't feel the need to leave. The quiet here is different than the quiet of her mother's hall. It's a silence without need of possibilities. It simply is.

Sigyn thinks she may have drifted off to sleep, until she feels the air whispering around her and hears Loki say, "Did you enjoy flying, then?"

"Oh, yes!" Sigyn breathes eagerly, and laughs at her own exuberance. She can almost feel Loki's own grin in the dark.

She feels that joy too, but she also owes herself a fuller answer.

"My mother sees far off," she whispers, although this is not a secret. "I don't think I want to learn that. I'm not—" She steals a glance at Loki. "I know you don't believe in inescapable fate," she says, voice deepening half-mockingly as she quotes him. "I think—I think I don't _want _to, but I do. And so," she shrugs, "the next best thing is simply not to know."

Loki snorts. "Pragmatic," he says, but she thinks there's respect beneath his amusement.

"But I liked flying," she breathes, and this is a secret. "That I will learn."

Loki doesn't answer, and at first she thinks he's gone back to silently watching the stars, but when she turns to look, he's vanished.

She starts upright and sits, blinking rapidly around the clearing, and she's just starting to think he's playing some trick when suddenly there's a trill of birdsong, and some shining white and black tipped feathered thing comes diving out of the treetops.

It's a bunting, a male one in the display phase. Sigyn stares as the bird rises swiftly in the air, only to dive down again, warbling its love song. This time, at the end of its descent, the bunting even seems to catch her eye, and then it cocks its head saucily and lets out a rapid burst of twittering song.

She bites her lip, but that's not enough, and a massive snort of laughter escapes.

The bird looks almost offended. Sigyn falls back in the grass, giggling ferociously up at the stars.

"Hmph!" she hears Loki grumble, and she drags herself upright again, hiding her laughter behind her hand.

Loki is standing a few feet away now, trying very hard to pout, and completely failing because he can't stop smiling.

"I don't know why you're laughing," he mutters. "I have exquisite plumage, and I'll have you know all the other female buntings love my singing."

"Oh," Sigyn snickers, but can't manage anything further before she's shaking with laughter again.

Loki holds his poor attempt at a pout a bare moment more, then he laughs too, and drops down into the grass with a grin.

"And here I thought you liked birds," he says slyly.

"But I'm not one!" she says, laughing still.

Loki lets out a sharp huff and tilts his head, bird-like, looking at her momentarily with large blinking eyes, and then just as quickly he's smiling, fully human again.

"No," he says slowly, "I suppose not."

Sigyn's laughter fades into something warmer and more fragile. She looks away from him, back up at the stars. They've moved quite noticeably across the sky. The night air now has the sharp, breathless quality of near-dawn.

"You called me a shape-changer," she says, hushed in the dark. "But I'm not like you."

"Thankfully," Loki says dryly. "I should hope you're like yourself."

She smiles, accepting the compliment, but she doesn't offer any answer to his statement.

"You're never going to tell me anything more about Thrym, are you?" she asks instead, without much hope.

"Oh, I wouldn't say _never_," Loki says easily. "But not tonight, no."

The night is old, edging toward morning. Sigyn sighs and pushes herself up from the ground slowly. She's aware of Loki watching her stand, but he seems distant, too. She imagines they are both thinking of wings.

"In that case," she says at last, "it's far past time I returned to my mother's hall. You can fulfill your promise tomorrow, I suppose, and next time I will be more exact in my bargains with you."

Loki laughs merrily. "Good luck with that, Odin's daughter! And good night!" He gives her a careless wave before lying back languidly in the grass.

Sigyn stumbles on to Fensalir and her own bed, but just before sleep, she finds herself wondering, briefly, where Loki sleeps.

"Probably has a nest in some tree," she mumbles into her linens, and falls asleep with a smile on her face.

* * *

_Notes:_

1. "The hammer is my penis" jokes are pretty obvious, of course, but I knew I would have to write this when, while listening to an otherwise painfully dry podcast about Norse myth, I heard the speaker describe Thrymskvida (just as drily) as a story about "the time Thor had his phallus stolen."

2. When flying, Frigg is, of course, a grey heron. Sigyn is a snow bunting.

As for Loki's little bird courtship dance: that's two hours of research on the mating habits of snow buntings well spent.


End file.
